Plenty of quality data in most regions of that chart. And so I can compare seasons, and have, and it does show improvements and regressions.
However I was interested in the context of this thread, to see if there was anything interesting to see regarding estimating LT1.
That’s all.
The graph and all my references are % LTHR. I live in the Central Valley of California. Theoretically I could ride several days with no real downhills. There is a time and place for steady efforts, my longer >4 hours rides are “relatively steady” because there are stops for water/toilet and short-ish downhills after long climbs. And responding to terrain.
Anyways, I’m bored with reading and editing a legal contract at work Here you go, a recent long effort at and around 88% LTHR:
Took an 8 minute break around 3.5 hours. Starting riding with a slow guy around 5.5 hours. Waited for him at the top of the last climb by riding back and forth. Waited for slow guy at a gas station around 7.5 hours. I could have kept going at around 88% LTHR the entire ride.
Go ahead and tell me about my unhealthy obsession with steady efforts or whatever else I’m doing wrong or misrepresenting or misinterpreting I could really use a break from this legal contract, its making my eyes bug out
I’ve been there. If that’s what you like and fits your performance needs, go for it. I did a block of that stuff and left me a bit flat for the punchy stuff. Prolly good for long bike packing adventures.
I do plenty of punchy stuff. And one steady 2 hour Tuesday ride a week. The entire year has punchy stuff, week after week, unless I was sick and/or coming back from a long layoff. And then its only steady/easy for a week.
That ride I posted was a casual century during my peak allergy season. Just took it easy as I have bad allergies.
self-coached “go long” double century A event and TTE of 60+ minuites
2019
159W
2nd year of TR, injured April-August but clearly struggling
2022
209W
2nd year of coaching with endurance+stuff approach
last 6 weeks
227W
starting 3rd year of coaching with endurance+stuff approach
Felt and easily noticed the recent fitness bump. FWIW turned sixty this year and seventh year road cycling. YMMV and all that. No year averaged more than 8 hours/week. Huge amount of intensity in late winter / early spring 2017, which led to some crash&burn weeks but I had the base fitness to pick myself back up and keep going. Last two years its been boring old endurance plus a lot of intensity stuff, consistency for the win.
Everybody is different. Focusing on metabolic fitness is working well for me.
2017 was 2nd year of self-coaching based on the Time-Crunched Cyclist book and CTS (Strava) plans
2019 was 2nd year of TR
2020 trying FasCat off-the-shelf plans, liked it so much I hired a coach in August 2020
August 2022 was end of 2nd year of Coach Isaiah, liked it so much I paid for another year (most likely my last year)
for comparison, showing the 2nd year of 3 different approaches. Running out the door for a ride, but I think 2 years ago I ended up around 190W at 88% LTHR and 260 FTP. Then bumped to 270W ftp in 2021, and last night in the heat I was pacing threshold at 285 for 8 minutes and that felt really good. FTP up again, but I don’t know have a better range to share, and at this point I don’t care as it doesn’t impact my current training.
Hello,
I am looking to see if there can be a general consensus of what may be an acceptable means to estimate your LT1 that will get you in the ballpark, 80% of the time.
I would like to avoid blood tests and to be frank, if I were to go down the rabbit hole of getting a Polar h10 and the HRV logger or fat maxxer apps, do the tests, I am not sure I would feel I came away with 100% reliable numbers or even be able to interpret the numbers I do get.
Instead, I am hoping to do a rough estimate and by doing training in this approximate range, over a season, get me 80-90% of the way there vs if I spent a lot of time and money trying to find out what my exact numbers are, which as I understand it will also be changing throughout the year as I get more Z2 fit, hopefully (my understanding is that as you get more fit, and at the extreme for professionals, your LT1 HR increases, so your LT1 becomes closer to your max HR, the power you can put out while staying in Z2/at or under LT1, also goes up?)
So, after skimming through the previous 860 posts, I have gleaned what some people have put as estimates of their zone 2 and I would like to ask the community if there is agreement that any of the below could be used as “good enough” estimates.
Before I list my estimates, my understanding under the ISM recommendation of more Z2 volume is to bring about metabolic improvements. As such, it is my understanding this training should be HR based vs power based. If this is true, I am going to ignore the guidelines for basing your LT1 level from a percentage of FTP as I understand that it is better to follow your HR as a guide and not power.
Along the same lines I am going to list the percentages of your LTHR vs your max HR. Ever since TR got rid of needing to do a ramp test, I don’t think I have really pushed to my max HR on the bike. However, I feel like I have a much better guess on what my LTHR is as I also get notifications of it from training peaks and intervals.icu once they detect a change from a recent ride.
So, my estimate from reading this thread is that your LT1 hear rate can be estimated to be:
83% - 88% of your LTHR
To be safe and conservative and if you are newer to zone 2 training, perhaps start at the low side, 80-83% of your LTHR (i.e. to try and ensure you are under your current LT1).
Then, as you progress through the year, slowly work your zone 2 rides towards the upper end of the range.
ISM would use lactate to come up with both Power zones and HR zones. Personally I use power and only look at HR if something isn’t going well. Some do the opposite.
FWIW I’ve received LTHR updates from TrainingPeaks since 2016, and on my Garmin 530 for 3+ years. The Garmin 530 gives a lot of estimates, averaging about once a week. Except when I’m fully detrained, the LTHR estimates from my Garmin are usually within 2bpm and are consistent with what I see after 10+ minutes riding at ftp (when doing threshold intervals). I would not rely on % LTHR as detraining will cause my Garmin to show a 4-6bpm drop which is gone with 3-4 weeks.
Work within that range but don’t worry about “upper end” “lower end”. It’s not about progressing from a certain lower percentage of the range to a few weeks later a higher percentage. Eventually that would come with time but you don’t program it.
The progression is duration based. Get a certain number of mins in and then progress the total amount of time spent in the zone.
Surround it with basic endurance riding, which is more like 70-75% of LTHR
Yes, that how i understand it. I’m just not sure above moving to the upper range. You just do more power at the same HR, but i never saw any evidence that your LT1 HR evolves.
Honestly I think people over complicate things a lot. To be fair though that’s a lot of fun.
Personally for z2/endurance stuff I would ride based on RPE.
I have experimented with lactate, checked out dfa alpha-1 using a polar h10, and monitored respiration rate. All of them get me in the ballpark but I have found it’s easiest to just ride at 3-4 maybe occasionally 5/10 RPE and monitor decoupling over time.
I’ll have to check my settings tomorrow. I record all my rides on either my fenix 6 or edge 1030. Maybe I should pick one and stick with it. I always wear a heart rate monitor and always record my power.
LTHR is almost always 158bpm or 159bpm, unless I do a long threshold like 1x35-min and then it will show 160 or 161. Or after a month off, I’ll see 156 or 157bpm.
Last year I received a LTHR only estimate after doing 16-min above threshold:
That wouldnt be correct, imo, but most trained people that have contributed to this thread might fall in that bracket. Still no very useful, it is a massive range.
Some of the very well trained, I’ll suggest it might be 80 or very low 80s. Someone off the couch it might be in the high 50s?
Something like 58 - 82% would probably include a vast majority.
Either way I dont think you can guessimate from a precentage of ftp. You might be able to back calculate it for a particular individual at a given point in time, I’m not sure how useful that is.
I wanted to poll one other item that I forgot about.
That is, for people looking to target more training time at or just below VT1 (as that is where I understand one should try to be at if they are trying to follow what ISM suggests), is just doing “endurance” rides as prescribed by TR, achieving this for you?
So whether through using TrainNow and just selecting the endurance workouts or doing the Endurance workouts that come within your TR training plan, are you hitting the suggested heart rate numbers as calculated by doing 83-88% of LTHR?
For me, I am, so this seems convenient that I don’t appear to need to adjust things manually up or down to illicit the desired metabolic response (with myself just interested in being close enough and not worried about trying to be exact).
I would also assume that should and hopefully it will, that if and when my FTP increases (through using AI FTP detection), that my endurance rides will also see an increase in average wattage range, while my target HR range (83-88%) remains the same?
Does this all sound right?
So, in closing, a very simple take away could be to just to more “endurance” rides in TR, could it be that simple?
I could really use a break from this legal contract, its making my eyes bug out 
